1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a technique for managing a plurality of storage apparatuses connected to one another via a network, and particularly relates to a technique for managing storage apparatuses in an environment where the number of storage apparatuses and the number of storage areas—management targets—increase.
2. Description of Related Art
With the increase in demand for efficient data management in computer systems, networks called storage area networks (SANs) have become widespread. With a SAN, storage apparatuses and host computers are connected to each other via equipment such as a switch; and the host computers on a network use the storage areas provided by these storage apparatuses. This system involves a series of management operations: creating storage areas the host computers require in appropriate storage apparatuses; and making settings so that the storage areas can be accessed by their allocated destination host computers. Because complicated management is required when performing management operations separately for each storage apparatus, developments have been made for a technique where, as described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-63063, one management computer is provided in a SAN so that it centrally manages the storage apparatuses and decreases the management load.
With conventional storage apparatus management methods, even after a plurality of SANs managed by separate management computers are integrated into one SAN, the respective management computers still remain isolated, so they cannot perform management operations suitable for the post-integration SAN structure, such as the allocation of a storage area in a storage apparatus that belonged to one SAN to a host computer that belonged to another SAN. Also, although the amount of management information dramatically increases with the increase in the number of management target storage apparatuses and storage areas, with the conventional storage apparatus management methods, the amount of manageable management information is limited by the volume of resources or the sizes of memories in the management computer.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to execute integral management for storage apparatuses even when communication networks are integrated or when the scale of a communication network expands.